Farmer digs in as Earl seeks to turf him off estate
To the neutral observer, it looks a rather uneven contest. In the blueblooded corner, lording it over 8,000 Shropshire acres from his family seat, oakly Park, is Ivor WindsorClive, 4th earl of Plymouth.
And in the red dragon corner is one of the earl’s tenants, Jenkin Rees, who, for the past 56 years, has farmed 240 acres on the WindsorClives’ secondary estate to the west of Cardiff.
Now, in a court judgment, Rees has been ordered to pay £10,000-a-month towards £ 100,000 in legal costs incurred by the earl as he’s battled to gain control of Maes Y Llech Farm — Rees’s home. It’s earmarked for development as part of a massive new garden city, with 7,000 houses being built over 20 years.
Rees, 88, who lives at the farm with his wife Brenda, 85, and their son Phillip, 60, declines to comment, but his solicitor, Peter Williams, tells me that the family wants a longstanding agreement to be honoured.
‘Jenkin Rees had discussions with the late earl’s agent going way back into the 1960s,’ Williams explains. ‘Jenkin recognised that, one day, there might be a desire to develop part of the farm but, if there was, he would be paid “fair compensation” to enable him to locate the family farm elsewhere.
A spokesman for the Plymouth estate acknowledges that ‘ the ending of any tenancy can be difficult, particularly when it involves a family home’. he tells me: ‘this is why over the last five years the owners have continually tried to engage Mr Rees and his family and repeatedly offered financial compensation terms, which were well beyond the legal statutory requirements.
‘these have all been ignored or rejected by the Rees family.’
But Williams retorts: ‘If Jenkin does not make the £10,000 payments, he’s not allowed to continue his battle to save his home — or get fair compensation.’